An ever-expanding conversation for those living beyond religious performance

Feb 29, 2008

Are You Afraid of the Light?

A fourteen-year old boy, who identified himself as a gay student was shot in the head last week by another student in a computer lab at school not far from where Brad and Wayne live. Reactions to this event have divided the community over discrimination and sexual orientation issues in the public school. That event and Wayne's recent trip to Kansas provoke a discussion about how we engage sin in the world. Do we as Christians react in our fear instead of with respond with love and truth to the most marginalized people in our society. What this tells us about our view of sin may tell us more than we want to admit.

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Your podcast really hit a nerve with me today. I grew up in a Baptist church where I was ordained as a Deacon at age 25. At age 50, I left the institution to be apart of what I call relational church. In the past 50 years, I have had to deal with simliar issues with the ones you described. I think that part of the problem is alot of adults have never had to deal with these issues before and do not know how. They are confused about Old Testament Law that said that people who do such things should be put to death and Jesus of the New Testament who loved the person and hated the sin. I do not have any answers for this either, but I know that Our Father loves both sides, and somehow that needs to seen by all.

Also, will you talk about the differences between you and the Emergent Church? I am really in the dark here and would like to have more info.

You have never ever even heard of me, but you have been a big help to me these past few months though your books and lifestream .com and I want to say thank you.
Dennis

To me it shows something more than what you discussed. When I was a child, I always wanted to be a boy. I hated to wear dresses and I weared my hear short. I played all the boys games and had almost only boys as friends, most of them where friends of my brothers (have four of them who are all younger than me). But no one (or just really rarely one) would have teased me because of that. No one would had called me gay or a cross-dresser. Actually no one really noticed and felt that there would be someting twisted in my identity. But if a boy wants to be a girl, everybody screams and feels obligated to do something about it. Does that not show how much this society is man-oriented? For a man to act like a woman is worse than for a woman to act like a man.
If a girl wants to be a boy, no one really seems to have a problem with that. But if a boy wants to be a girl, everybody does. But they both are twisted in their heart the same and they both need love and help to sort that out. Just to think about that.

This podcast raises a lot more questions about Wayne and Brad than about the young person who murdered a homosexual 14 year old.

First of all, why does Wayne assume the young shooter was acting on misguided Christian impulses? In the modern day, Muslims are still beheading homosexuals in those countries where Sharia law is enforced. How do we know the kid isn’t a Muslim? Furthermore, lots of non-religious people have hated homosexuals – Hitler and the S.S. exterminated them like rats. So maybe the shooter just had a visceral dislike for homosexuals.

Brad makes the argument that there is no evidence in the Bible that God wants us to eradicate or stamp-out sin in the community around us. Wayne backs this up by suggesting it would be better is we let sinners wear their sin on their sleeve, rather than repress it. They ignore the fact that the Old Testament is useful for guidance in many respects, and was used by Jesus and the apostles for that purpose. In leading the Israelites into the promised land God was insistent that the people stamp out the leaven of sin they were to encounter in the people they were to destroy. Does that mean we can go around murdering sinners among us? No, it does mean that God is concerned about the leavening effects that unchecked sinful behavior has on the community. Homosexual behavior used to outlawed throughout America. The Supreme Court has abolished that. Were our ancestors wrong to put such laws into place? I don’t think so. If those laws were still in place a lot of people would not have gotten AIDS and died. All of God laws are for our good, whether Wayne and Brad agree with them or not.

Wayne and Brad express sympathy for Ted Haggert, the Evangelical leader caught in relationship with a homosexual prostitute. Wayse says he “knows” that Ted was “just greiveing” about the sin, all the while he was in it. I DON’T KNOW IT. To me the guy (Ted) is a rank hypocrite and I praise God he was found out. Or do Wayne and Brad, on top of everything else, have a problem with Paul’s command to expel the immoral brother from among us (1 Corinthians 5:13)?

Wayne in this podcast ridicules Chrisitians who advocate for other Christians to pull their children out of California public schools, becasue of alleged indoctrination on homosexulity going on there. Wayne doesn’t put too much stress on the fact that his wife is employed by the Calif. school system. Nor does he explain why he makes a career out of calling people into the freedom of relational Chrisitanity, but would hinder Christians who may want to bring their children out to enjoy school choice (or homeschooling).

why do people automatically assume that someone being DIFFERENT from them automatically conveys upon them the right to impose their hate to the point of absolutely destroying that person, whether swiftly with a gun or slowly over time with continual bullying, harassment, ostracisation, psychological abuse & terrorism, etc.? for every kid or adult killed by worthless garbage imagining they have the “right” to destroy someone just for being different, thousands die a silent and slower death EVERY DAY from the continued and relentless onslaught of mistreatment.

and because people persist in these delusions, humans cannot grow past the need for retributive justice even theologically. and until they do, the TELOS cannot manifest in full or come to fruition.